The two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch is one of the economically most important pests in a wide range of outdoor and protected crops worldwide. Its control has been and still is largely based on the use of insecticides and acaricides. However, due to its short life cycle, abundant progeny and arrhenotokous reproduction, it is able to develop resistance to these compounds very rap...

Life history variation is a general feature of arthropod systems, but is rarely included in models of field or laboratory data. Most studies assume that local processes occur identically across individuals, ignoring any genetic or phenotypic variation in life history traits. In this study, we tested whether field populations of Pacific spider mites (Tetranychus pacificus) on grapevines (Vitis v...

Plants respond to herbivory by mounting a defense. Some plant-eating spider mites (Tetranychus spp.) have adapted to plant defenses to maintain a high reproductive performance. From natural populations we selected three spider mite strains from two species, Tetranychus urticae and Tetranychus evansi, that can suppress plant defenses, using a fourth defense-inducing strain as a benchmark, to ass...

Abstract Background The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Koch (Trombidiformes: Tetranychidae), is one of the most damaging mites in agriculture. Due to concern for intensive use synthetic acaricides, entomopathogenic fungi represents a feasible alternative T. management. In present study, 7 isolates Metarhizium were characterized physiological and molecularly (based on ITS1-5.8s-ITS...

Laboratory studies were conducted to compare the relative fitness of clodinafop-propargyl herbicide resistant Lolium rigidum accessions with their clodinafop-propargyl susceptible counterparts in 2014. Factors evaluated were Lolium populations at constant salinity stress (0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 dS cm2) and water stress (0, -3, -6, -9, -12 and -15 bar). The maximum germination in salinity stres...

Rickettsiae are gram-negative, obligately intracellular bacteria responsible for arthropod-borne spotted fevers and typhus. Experimental studies have delineated a cluster of naturally rifampin-resistant spotted fever group species. We sequenced the 4, 122- to 4,125-bp RNA polymerase beta-subunit-encoding gene (rpoB) from typhus and spotted fever group representatives and obtained partial sequen...